Baranyai: Quebec’s Bill 62 opens season on racial hatred

A moment like this should expose the absolute folly of Quebec’s Bill 62, the so-called “religious neutrality” law. The bill restricts people from offering or receiving public services with their faces covered, effectively targeting a small number of Muslim women who wear a face veil (niqab) and an even smaller number who wear a burka.

Perhaps they lost sight of it during earnest debates about secular public spaces and reasonable accommodation. Then came the moment when a 29-year-old bearded suspect shouted “Allahu akbar” after driving a truck into a New York bike path, killing eight people and injuring several more.

In that moment, the foolhardiness of such legislation must be abundantly clear. And if not then, in the short hours afterward, when the U.S. president raced to tweet his demands for even more extreme immigration policies.

Muslim New Yorkers, mourning the senseless violence, immediately braced for backlash after the deadliest attack on their city since 9/11.

In the dark period immediately after 9/11, when nearly 3,000 Americans were killed, the Southern Poverty Law Center recorded a dramatic spike in hate crimes against Muslims and Arabs, which increased by a staggering 1,600 per cent.

Indiscriminate and violent backlash against minorities often follow acts of terror. But they’re not the only trigger.

It’s also an increasingly common response to intolerant political rhetoric, reflected in legislation that singles out minorities as an inherently suspicious “other.”

In the days surrounding the 10-year anniversary of 9/11, the SPLC recorded a rash of anti-Muslim hate crimes amid useless stabs at constitutionally redundant legislation — in more than a dozen states — to prohibit Sharia law.

The watchdog also documented more than 400 incidents of hateful harassment in 10 days following the 2016 presidential election, after a campaign defined by race-baiting rhetoric.

Canada has not been immune to the acrimony. Nativist rhetoric found an eager ear in Alexandre Bissonette, accused in the shooting deaths of six men at a Quebec mosque on Jan. 29. He faces trial next March.

The day after the attack, in cities across the country, Canadians stood shoulder to shoulder at candlelight vigils and listened as local imams denounced hate.

It is a cruel irony that Muslims, who overwhelmingly suffer the greatest casualties at the hands of terrorist fanatics, must continually affirm theirs is a religion of peace. Even while mourning their dead, slaughtered during evening prayers.

We stood, united in quiet defiance of all the post-inaugural bloviating about a Muslim registry. Not here, our presence silently affirmed.

Canadians’ moment of good will and solidarity was badly misspent.

Bill 62 was a disaster right out of the gate. The lack of clarity on implementation would be comical, if it weren’t so tragic. The internecine row over affirming veiled women’s identities on public transit is just one example, as though Montreal were in the midst of a financially crippling rash of bus-pass fraud. Ridiculous as it is, it’s an improvement over the initial suggestion women would have to unveil for the duration of the ride, turning bus drivers into the niqab patrol.

Never mind the likelihood much of the bill won’t stand up in the courts. Never mind provisions already exist to verify a woman’s identity when it’s actually important, such as when she votes. Ignore, even, the absurdly tiny minority of women whose behaviour this overkill-bill seeks to control.

Bill 62 casts suspicion on a vulnerable minority under the pretext of “religious neutrality.” A very short reading of history shows such an action is likely to embolden racially motivated attacks on innocent civilians. Full stop.